I have no envy of their medical system as a patient or doctor. Removal of non core services from the NHS and some contribution at the point of use may improve our system because it would reduce abuse.

 

Here you go....

http://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/S...-For-Sale.aspx

 

Back in the 19th century the classical liberals were really optimistic about the power of Capitalism to 'improve' everyone and end material misery. I don't think anyone takes this seriously now, Capitalism seems to have no end point, it just keeps demanding that people run flat out until they die, it innovates new needs and wants, uses seduction in place of coercion. We've been pursuing this path for almost 200 years and 'poverty' is still a problem? How is that when it is supposedly the most successful economic system developed?

I think you are confusing the means by which one individual can achieve emancipation, with what can achieve social emancipation. If one person 'works harder' then it only makes it harder for others to succeed. De Tocqueville observes this about America. Wealth might not be a zero sum game but freedom is. True freedom in Capitalism is to own, then you can exploit the efforts of others. What we are doing isn't noble or good IMHO but yeah I don't see much alternative right now to the grit you talk about. One just gets squashed without it.

 

This whole "I work hard so deserve it and can therefore be a complete **** to everyone" mentality is a bigger issue than immigration and welfare IMO.

I'm sure plenty with no money work their butts off. Success has a large chunk of good luck involved. Those with money have no greater say than those without. The Daily Mail is the worst promoter of capitalist BS.

 

I do still seriously see capitalism as the solution tdw. I think today's poverty in the UK has mainly been caused by allowing people to opt out by excessive welfare state provision.

Some financiers have corrupted the image of capitalism through their fraud hidden by repackaged complexity in financial products.

For a comparison of the alternatives then the divergence of East and West German economies in the 60s and 70s is surely proof enough that capitalism works?

 

germany had (and do) a Corporatist economic model

1/3 State
1/3 Corporations
1/3 Trade Unions

all pulling together for a common goal

this is very different to the free market neo liberal economics we practise - along with the Americans

 

Are North and South Korea a better illustration?

 

The root cause of today's poverty is 2 billion people in Asia working for peanuts. Of course we have to react to that challenge, but that's the root cause.

 

So is the question, "How do we get the lazy and unmotivated to up their game to provide something people find valuable?" I would say take away benefits as a lifestyle choice so that if you want to eat you have to genuinely want to work and have very robust methods of determining who can't, which they are trying to much criticism. Then if there are less people on benefits you can take less tax off workers to make their toil worthwhile.

 

Calling my comments anti capitalism is rather short sighted and misses the point completely.

Yes capitalism works but it does not automatically entitle anyone doing "well" to look down on those who aren't.

Doctors are in a rather unusual position (I know many); they get paid the sort of money usually reserved for successful businessmen yet seem much more cushioned from risks. I know a few extremely arrogant doctors who simply did a particular degree. This is balanced by some really nice people too but having pulled our son out of a school full of these doctors kids, I am a little less taken by the "success" many enjoy at the tax payers expense.

 

Thank you to the ones that replied with interesting fscts. - getting the licence bikes etc to show and understand what the market want and ive been toying with the idea of doing my bike licence for years.
Ive always grown up with my dad and his bikes and when he talks about the bikes, trips etc i can tell he wants to say it would be good to see you as a rider not as a passanger. I guess im a little scared. Its you and floor! Not steering sheel to smack your face on.

 

Matteeboy, I don't think I was taking you as anti-capitalist.

Talking about risk I think you must be meaning financial/investment risk and feel it is low because the liabilities are insured? I have to say that I believe the medical risks are huge and it is that responsibility to not miss a detectable and treatable cancer, fracture, drug interaction or damage an anatomical structure when cutting or injecting always weighs heavily indeed. I would much rather run a shop or factory if there wasn't the challenge, interest and reward that I presently enjoy.

 

That's because they are a profession. A profession operates more along the lines of a guild than a Capitalist 'market', it specifically closes off competition securing members privileges and benefits. On top of that the medical profession has in effect a state granted monopoly to supply an essential service in the UK (the NHS).

 

Our Capitalist system won't supply full employment (that is as close to a 'fact' as we can get with this stuff), but you want to blame people who are unsuccessful and/or don't participate because they have the 'wrong' values or personalities.

What about the other people who don't work? Who just own? Just saying. It isn't so simple. Saying "work or starve" seems to be authoritarian and indefensible to me.

 

Come off it, this is a silly false dichotomy. So state capitalism/actual existing socialism was a failure, therefore neoliberal capitalism must be the only alternative? I think most people can see the logical error there.

There's a few point of view we could take about the 'cause' of poverty, we could looks at vast wealth inequalities and see that some people are very wealth purely from owning; the do as much work as benefits claimants in reality. Capitalism has been running for over 200 years but 'seems' to always create/require a poor underclass. In its very early history it threw thousands into an urban misery of long hours, squalid housing, poor pay, early deaths, it took away the alternative of pastoral self-sufficiency and made people miserable. So the thinking goes that the early welfare state, laws on conditions and limited hours, helped to alleviate these 'problems'. I don't see any evidence that Laissez-faire economics is going to turn everyone into lovely middle class people like you/us, more likely it just creates a large 'precariat' (people with no job security), zero hour contracts, low pay, etc. Yeah we can argue that they can afford more flat screen TV's as Capitalism grows the economy, but it seems to me that our existence can't just be measured by material; freedom isn't just freedom to consume.

 

Why couldn't it give full employment? There are plenty of things people want doing and are prepared to pay for that in some areas mostly immigrants choose to do whereas it seems too much effort to turn up reliably for £15 an hour for some. I wouldn't give state benefits to someone who was capable of working but chose not to and I wouldn't expect to receive them myself in this situation. If someone is fortunate to not have to work but doesn't rely on state benefits then I don't have any problem with that.

 

There were ample opportunities to not be in a poor under class in Thatcher's laissez faire capitalist society. I took advantage of them, but I fear the expansion of benefits if I had been born 25 years later may have given me no incentive or route to do so. Hopefully the present government's reforms will partly restore the situation so I will vote for them again.

Who will you vote for and why?

 

My sister friend had a florist shop in the local town shopping parade,had to give it up because of cost the council were charging for the premises.
I do know someone who is doing flowers etc from home though,and are doing quite well.

 

How dare you get back on topic.

The local council was also the landlord of my shop before I closed it, all promises and no action, had a leaky roof for the full 12months of the lease and demanded a bigger rent without doing any repairs.

 

There are only so many priesthoods available in professions such as medicine. You just made it harder for someone else to gain entry.

 

That it doesn't lead to full employment is an empirical fact. One reason is the inherent instability of boom/bust I suppose?

 

Competition ups our game. I still have nightmares about chemistry A level, but without some competition I would have stayed at D grade as in the mock because there was am ample supply of would be medical students who would knock that into a cocked hat in their sleep. As it was, I got my *** in gear and pulled an A out the bag along with four others. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered and been an aerial fitter as per careers advice. I fitted an aerial today. Really I should have called a man to increase UK GDP, because I have denied his kids their next pair of shoes? That makes as much sense to me as your argument. I would call the man in if he would do a better job for the cost than me. As it was, this aerial was easy, you could point it anywhere and every channel worked.

 

Because we pay people to be lazy? Or we try to give the illusion of job security when there really isn't any except the failing attempts of socialist governments to prop up failing industries? I think we need more (Republican) American values, not less.

 

You are committing a kind of component fallacy, assuming that what you have done can be replicated en mass or extrapolated en mass. If you do well in exams to get into medical college you make it harder for someone else to. It doesn't scale. Same with people saying that 'cos they own a business then everyone else could work hard and achieve the same, well who is going to work for these businesses then?

 

No offense John but you are sheltered within a profession. If you were surviving in some sort of pure market what you say might carry more weight.

 

The concept of full employment was abolished as a national aspiration in the 80's

Unemployment has been used as a part of our socio economic policy for decades

Which just recognises the simple fact that the free market has no mechanism for providing full employment

 

Have you seriously looked at the state of America under Republican values, the country is a basket case

Life expectancy is actually in decline for a vast number of Americans

And the utter and tragic irony is that "they" gave US taxpayers money to bail out, to the tune of 100's of trillions of dollars, the bankrupt financial industry

 

American values made sense in the 19th and early 20th century when you had a continent to conquer...the self-sufficient frontier man, then the captain of industry...the John Galt figure lol.

Somehow all this got turned into a neo-conservative fantasy of national renewal. Times have changed though, there is no more West to win.

 

tdw, you may prefer to think that being a successful participant in a capitalist economy is due to factors outwith the control of the individual. Does that comfort you? Do you feel disenfranchised? I cannot think of a more disempowering state of mind, but it would explain your posts.

The concept of full employment as a realistic policy is surely thwarted by free will of individual participants?

Hodgy, I find a lot of what Ron Paul says resonates far more than George Bush. There is a Republicanism that would bring the US away from any suggestion of being a basket case I believe. Financial corruption is cited as the downfall of capitalism, widely and falsely in my view.

 

You have accused me of that in the past, but seem to assume that because my main activity has been in socially funded medicine (which I would vote to dismantle) that I have not participated successfully in pure markets to give me a valid opinion. It was not medicine that bought my car as I am obviously keen to tell any patient that thinks a Datsun is coining it at their expense, although it is rarely said. It was not medicine that funded about half the equity in my house, it just doesn't pay that well in Scotland... So please stop making excuses for me or yourself. Forgive me not responding further but I am preparing for a non medical trade show for a few hours...